Amazon Founder Jeff Bezos Explains His $250 Million Purchase of The Washington Post

The Washington Post changes hands

First off, 'Wow!' That's the only appropriate reaction to what just went down, which is an agreement between Jeff Bezos to acquire The Washington Post for $250 million. As the founder and chief of Amazon, and subsequently one of the richest men in the world (19th, to be exact), Bezos can certainly afford the transaction, the question is what does he want with it? Furthermore, what does he plan to do with his new acquisition?

Bezos addressed those questions in an open letter to employees of The Washington Post, ensuring them that the values of the newspaper will not change, and that it'll continue to work hard to not make mistakes, yet own up to them when/if they do happen. He also told employees he won't be their daily figurehead.

"I won’t be leading The Washington Post day-to-day. I am happily living in 'the other Washington' where I have a day job that I love," Bezos stated in his letter. "Besides that, The Post already has an excellent leadership team that knows much more about the news business than I do, and I’m extremely grateful to them for agreeing to stay on."

That doesn't mean there won't be change. On the contrary, Bezos flat out said there would be, citing a need to "invent" and "experiment." What exactly all that entails isn't yet known, but give it a few months and we should have a better idea of which direction the newspaper is going.

One thing that's interesting is that the acquisition was made by Bezos and not Amazon. A person could speculate all day along about what Amazon would want with a major newspaper, especially with Amazon taking on political issues like online taxation. This isn't about Amazon, however, at least not directly, though we're sure the online retailer and its investors don't mind one bit that Bezos is the new owner.

Maybe he's got some idea's on how to make a paywall news site actually make money and he needs a brand that has some traction with older readers. Either that or he has so much money he can pretty much buy anything he wants to on a whim.

Most of the articles I've read about this sale talk about how the Washington Post is a "respected" outlet of journalism but then can't list many instances of noted journalism that they've done that are less than 40 years old. If Watergate is the only piece of journalism that they have, and it seems to be, then it should be no surprise that the paper tanked and the paper shouldn't be heralded as some "bastion" of journalism. Talk about living in the past.

I thought Amazon was only going for Free Next Day shipping to compensate for paying all local sales taxes (which they're pushing for). That's not something that I'd prefer, especially since their really-rapid shipper in my area is not a "big brand" one and is rather sketchy.